


We Were Never Far From Nowhere

by SuburbanSun



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Idiots in Love, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Pining, Sharing a Bed, cosmic love exchange 2019, post-Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-01 02:42:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20250850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuburbanSun/pseuds/SuburbanSun
Summary: Getting stranded together at a roadside motel is no one's best case scenario, but it just might give Michael and Alex the chance to sort a few things out.





	We Were Never Far From Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grasonas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grasonas/gifts).

> Written for the Cosmic Love Exchange 2019 for [gra-sonas](https://gra-sonas.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> Takes place months after the end of season 1, once they’ve gotten Max back. No love triangles to be found.
> 
> Title from [Homecoming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIHMAhIe9es) by Josh Ritter.

Michael had rarely come across an engine he couldn’t tune up or a truck he couldn’t fix, but he wasn’t a miracle worker. He couldn’t conjure up car parts out of nowhere. 

“What’s the point of even having alien superpowers?” he grumbled, closing the hood of the SUV with a little more force than necessary. It had been a long day, and now it was shaping up to be an even longer night. 

“I take it you can’t fix it,” said Alex. He stood a few feet away from Michael, a crease of concern between his brows, his hands tucked in his jacket pockets. 

Michael scowled. “‘Course I can fix it.” He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of one hand and kicked up a little dirt. “Fuel pump’s busted, though, and it’s not gonna run ‘til I can get a new one.” He swept his arm out to the side, gesturing at the wide expanse of desert that surrounded them. “You see any 24-hour AutoZones around here?” 

Alex cocked his head, his mouth a tight line. Michael grit his teeth. 

“Yeah, didn’t think so,” he said, and headed for the passenger side to grab his phone; by the time he’d opened the door, Alex was already on the line with a tow company. Michael half-listened to the series of uh huhs and okays that comprised Alex’s side of the conversation, but turned to lean back against the door of the SUV. He let his head hit the cool metal with a thud, and tried not to focus on how the alleged blacksite they’d driven four hours to do recon on had resulted in a whole lot of nothing. Tried not to focus on whether that meant the facility, which had been been crumbling and condemned when they’d pulled up to it in the early evening, had never housed aliens at all… or if something unspeakable had happened to the ones who’d been held there. 

He looked up at the stars and wished he’d brought a bottle or six of acetone with him. He’d picked a hell of a time to try to kick _ that _habit. 

“Well, do you want the bad news first?” Alex’s voice interrupted his pity party, and Michael pushed off the car to see him coming around from the other side, cell phone in hand. 

“What’s the alternative?”

“There’s kind of only bad news.”

Michael chuckled. _ Of course_. “Lay it on me, then.” 

“The closest tow company’s 45 minutes away, and they close in half an hour. Which means...” Alex sighed.

“I’m guessing it _ doesn’t _mean that they’re staying open late for us out of the goodness of their hearts.” 

“Guess they were fresh out of New Mexico hospitality,” Alex said with a smirk that made something flare in Michael’s belly. He ignored it-- something he’d forced himself to get used to doing lately-- and Alex went on. “They can come tow it first thing in the morning.”

Michael rapped his knuckles against the passenger door. “Woulda offered to take my truck if I’d known we’d be sleeping in it. It’d feel like old times.” 

Alex shook his head. “I told the woman on the phone which mile marker we broke down next to, and she said there’s a motel just a couple miles up ahead.”

_ A motel, huh? _ Michael rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand, a breath puffing out his cheeks. It was already the longest span of time he’d spent with Alex in months. The longest they’d been alone together since-- since Max, since Michael had recultivated his penchant for drowning in booze and bar fights. They’d worked together-but-not-really as part of the group effort to get Max back, and by the time his brother had rejoined the land of the living, Michael had managed to get a better handle on himself. But that didn’t mean shit where Alex was concerned. Michael’d never quite gotten a handle on that situation. Hell, he’d only begrudgingly agreed to drive out to the site that day because Valenti was on call and Michael didn’t want Alex going alone. 

Suffice to say, he didn’t know if he was ready for an overnighter. 

“I think it’s our best option,” Alex said. “I thought about calling Kyle, or Max, but by the time one of them drove all the way out here and then drove us back, it’d be morning, and--” 

“And we’d still have to do something about the car,” Michael finished for him, resigning himself to his fate. 

Alex gave him an inscrutable look, then circled to the rear door on the driver’s side to pull out his backpack and shoulder it. He locked the SUV, then eyed Michael across the hood. “Well? Are you ready?” 

For a leisurely nighttime stroll up a desert highway with someone he’d barely exchanged two sentences with in months? To share a suite with adjoining bedrooms with the one person who never fully left his mind? Was Michael ready?

“Lead the way, Private.”

\---

Michael should have suspected something was wrong when the parking lot of a shabby motel situated right smack in the middle of bumfuck nowhere was practically full. Or when he and Alex had to elbow their way through the lobby. Or when there was a line at the front desk at 11 o’clock on a Thursday night.

He definitely should have suspected something when the bored-looking woman at the front desk asked him if they had a reservation. 

“A reservation,” Michael said, incredulity creeping into his voice. “For this dump?”

Alex nudged him over with his shoulder, effectively shutting him up. “What he means is, we just need a couple of rooms for the night. We’ll be checking out first thing tomorrow.” 

The woman-- Sheila, her nametag read-- tapped a few keys, a skeptical look on her face. “We fill up fast these days, on account of the canyon up the road got added to a Buzzfeed list of the most Instagrammable places on planet Earth.” 

Michael barked a laugh, but Alex elbowed him in the side before he could say anything else. 

“Boys, you’re in luck,” Sheila said, sliding a key card across the cracked countertop. “We’ve just got the one room left, so you’re in 301 around the corner past the ice machine.” 

Michael swallowed. “No, that’s not--”

“We actually need two,” Alex said at the same time. Michael looked over at Alex out of the corner of his eye, but he was watching Sheila intently. “Are you sure you don’t have another room available? One you might’ve missed?”

She moved her mouse around, tapped a few keys, all the while staring unblinkingly at Alex. “Nope. I didn’t miss anything. Room 301. Take it or leave it.” 

After a beat, Alex nodded and handed her his credit card, biting his lip. Michael drummed his fingers on the counter as he snuck looks at Alex, taking in the stiffness of his shoulders, the tightness of his jaw. Everything about his posture screamed that he did _ not _want to spend a night in the same room as Michael. 

Well, Michael didn’t particularly want to spend a night in the same room as Alex, either. Didn’t know if he could take it, if he was being honest with himself. Not when it was so close to what he actually wanted. What he knew he couldn’t have.

Alex hesitated just a moment longer than necessary after signing the credit card slip, but Michael noticed. He’d always been keenly aware of Alex, and he didn’t think that would ever change. When Alex turned to face him, though, his expression didn’t betray anything at all. 

“Just past the ice machine,” Sheila repeated from her spot behind the computer, and with that, Alex spun around and led the way. 

\---

"You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” 

“There must be some mistake,” Alex said, frowning down at the lone double-bed in the middle of the tiny motel room. “I’ll go back and talk to her.”

Michael ran a tired hand down the length of his face. “The mistake is that goddamn _ Instagram _ was invented in the first place. You can talk to her all you want, but that’s not gonna magically free up a room with two beds.” 

“There might be a cot they can roll in, though, or something.” 

“You think they’re gonna fit a cot in here?” Michael looked pointedly at the space on either side of the bed, just wide enough to walk through. A heavy dresser and spindly desk took up the rest of the room. “Be sure to ask for room service while you’re at it, and directions to the on-site spa. I could use a nice massage.”

Alex glared, and damn if that look didn’t always make Michael feel chastised. “Your sarcasm’s not helpful, Guerin. It’s not my fault we’re stuck here.”

“Oh, does that mean it’s mine?”

“I didn’t say that--”

“Because if you’d brought your car by the junkyard so I could make sure it’s running properly instead of avoiding me all the goddamn time--” Michael cut himself off, heaved a sigh that he could feel in his toes, and shook his head. After a moment, he jerked his thumb toward the bathroom door, not quite meeting Alex’s eyes. “Gonna go wash up. I’ll crash on the floor.” 

Once in the bathroom, Michael shut the door and sank back against it. They’d made perfectly fine, civil conversation on the two-mile walk to the hotel: debriefing about the mission, talking about the self-defense classes Alex had helped Isobel find. They’d even talked about the fucking weather. Why were they suddenly sniping at each other? 

He stepped toward the sink and met his own dubious gaze in the mirror. Fine-- he knew a defense mechanism when he saw one. As he splashed cool water on his face, Michael acknowledged to himself that _ maybe _ he was letting the tension of the situation get to him, and _ maybe _he should try a little harder to stop.

“Sorry,” he muttered as he flicked off the bathroom light. “I know it’s not your fault we’re stuck here.” Alex had already removed his prosthetic and propped it against the wall, and sat beneath turned-down covers on one side of the bed, stripped down to his t-shirt. His jeans were neatly folded on the desk. 

“It’s okay,” he said after a moment. “It’s not exactly an ideal situation.” 

Michael chuckled darkly. No, he supposed, being stuck in a room with him wouldn’t be Alex’s ideal situation, would it? Not anymore. “I’ll just--” He reached for the pillow Alex wasn’t using, but Alex grabbed the other end and tugged, shaking his head. 

“You’re not sleeping on the _ floor_, Guerin.”

“Why not? I’ve slept on worse.” 

Alex’s eyes softened. “Well. There’s no need for that; this bed is plenty big for both of us. And this motel isn’t exactly the pinnacle of cleanliness. I think the last time they vacuumed, Obama was president.” 

Michael slowly let go of the pillow. It wasn’t about some misguided gentlemanliness, and it wasn’t even really to make Alex more comfortable. Michael wasn’t sure he himself could handle being in the same bed with Alex, inches away and unable to reach out and bridge the gap. He wasn’t sure if he could take that kind of pain. But the look on Alex’s face was almost hopeful, and hell, Michael had been hurt worse. He tugged off his jeans and crawled into bed just as Alex switched off the lamp. 

A thin sliver of moonlight from where the curtains weren’t quite pulled shut was all that kept them from total darkness. Michael could just make out the curve of Alex’s cheek against the pillow, his eyes only shadows. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard. 

“Goodnight,” he whispered.

“‘Night.”

\---

By the time the clock on the dusty VCR across the room read 1:15 AM, Michael had accepted that he wouldn’t be falling asleep. No time soon, at least. Watching the rise and fall of Alex’s chest as he slept had always made Micheal feel as close as he could get to calm and centered. He’d barely ever gotten to experience it, but he found that that hadn’t changed. 

It didn’t outweigh the simmering current of adrenaline that ran through him at Alex’s proximity, however, and _ that _ was what kept him wide awake.

The arm Michael had tucked under his pillow started to tingle, and he tried to adjust his position without jostling the covers too much.

A sigh from the other side of the bed startled him. 

“Yeah,” muttered Alex, blinking up at the ceiling. “I can’t sleep either.” 

“Thought you already were,” Michael said, his voice rough. 

Alex shifted to his side, facing him. “Something I taught myself while overseas. ‘S not always easy to sleep over there, so I’d make myself keep my eyes closed, and make my breathing as even as possible. Kind of a fake-it-’til-you-make-it kind of thing.”

“Did it work?”

“Sometimes.” He cleared his throat. “Not tonight. You?”

Michael shrugged the shoulder that wasn’t digging into the mattress and tucked his arm up under the pillow again. “Just hard to sleep in unfamiliar places, I guess.”

“Says the man who used to sleep in the back of his truck,” Alex said, with no bite to his words. His tone was almost teasing, Michael thought.

“People change, I guess.” 

It was still dark in the room, but Michael had had plenty of time for his eyes to adjust, so he could see the corners of Alex’s mouth twitch. He closed his eyes against it, and neither of them said anything.

“I think tonight’s the most you’ve spoken to me in months,” Alex said after awhile. Michael didn’t open his eyes right away, and when he did, he saw Alex picking at a loose thread on his pillowcase and avoiding his gaze. 

Michael swallowed. He hadn’t expected this kind of late night pillow talk. Or any at all. “What’re you talking about? We talk,” he said, even though he knew it wasn’t true. 

“About the mission, sure. Or through Isobel. Not really, though.”

Puffing out a breath, Michael felt thankful that he couldn’t see Alex very well in the dark. It made things easier. “Never were all that good at talking,” he said, rolling on his back to face the ceiling. He waited for Alex to respond, and when he didn’t, Michael huffed. “Well-- what do you wanna talk about, Alex?” 

“Nothing,” Alex said softly. Michael rubbed at his forehead, suppressing a groan, and Alex spoke up again. “What you said earlier. About me avoiding you all the time. Do you think I’m intentionally avoiding you?” 

“You said yourself we don’t talk much. Why do you think that is?” Still on his back, Michael let his head loll to the side enough to look at Alex. 

“You think it’s because I’m deliberately avoiding talking to you?”

Michael furrowed his brow and rolled onto his side again. This time he was a little closer to Alex, almost close enough to feel the warmth of his body. “Aren’t you?”

Alex laughed, just a puff of surprised breath, and Michael could feel it stir the air between them. “No. That’s not-- I’ve been giving you space.” 

“Looks a lot like avoiding me.” 

“It’s what I thought you wanted.” Silence stretched between them, their breathing the only sound in the room, before Alex continued. “You were-- distracted, and consumed with getting Max back, and as far as I could tell the last thing you wanted to deal with was me and my baggage, so.” He shrugged, tugging at that loose pillowcase thread again. “You had other things on your plate.” 

“Nice way of saying I became a drunk piece of shit for awhile,” Michael said, hoping to lighten the mood, but Alex didn’t crack a smile. “But-- then I got my shit together.” 

“I know.” Alex shifted in place, meeting Michael’s eyes. “And I thought maybe that meant you were ready to finally have that talk, but then you just kept staying away from me. What was I supposed to take away from that, Guerin?”

Michael let out a frustrated sigh. After they’d gotten Max back, he’d worked hard to get his drinking under control, stopped getting into fights-- stopped frequenting the Wild Pony altogether-- but Alex hadn’t seemed to notice at all. Certainly hadn’t seemed to care. So Michael had figured it was their new status quo: only talk about the mission, avoid too much eye contact, never acknowledge that they’d once meant something to each other. Had he been wrong about that?

“Look,” Alex began, interrupting his thoughts. “I know-- I know you don’t feel the same way about me anymore, but I--”

Michael’s laugh was harsh, breaking the quiet stillness of the room. He could see Alex frown, could see the familiar little crease form between his brows, but he couldn’t let a statement like that slide.

“You think you know everything, huh?”

After a beat, Alex answered. “I think I know you.”

“Alex…” When his voice nearly broke on the word, Michael cleared his throat. “No offense, but I’m starting to think neither one of us knows a goddamn thing.” 

Alex blinked at him, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. “What do you mean?”

Michael nearly growled in frustration. “Why do you think I got my shit together?” 

“Once Max was back…”

“Not everything is about _ Max_, as much as he might beg to differ.” Michael clutched his pillow a little tighter to keep himself from scooting closer on the bed like every cell of his body wanted to. “Liz and I were in the lab one day, and Valenti was hovering around for some reason, and he mentioned that your enlistment period was almost up, and that you were gonna leave the Air Force.” Michael wrinkled his nose. “Now that I think about it, it wasn’t even related to what we were talking about. He just changed the subject, like he wanted to make sure we knew.”

Alex shuffled a bit on his side of the bed. “That would’ve been a couple months ago.” 

“Yeah. And I got scared that you might, I don’t know, leave. Again. Now that you didn’t have anything tying you to Roswell.” 

“Guerin...”

“And I guess I wanted to give myself another shot at being someone who you’d actually want to be with.” His heart thudded in his chest, and he watched as Alex shut his eyes tight and let out a long breath through his nose. He inhaled, then opened them.

“You are. You’ve always been. I just wasn’t always so good at making you feel like it. I’m sorry.” 

As the words settled in his heart, all Michael wanted to do was dive across the bed and kiss Alex until morning. He knew he needed to fight that instinct. They were finally talking, and maybe they weren’t perfect at it, but it was a start. Instead, he reached out with the hand that wasn’t tucked under his pillow and slowly began to slide it, palm down, up the mattress in between them. He watched Alex’s eyes track it as it moved. 

“So… are you? Leaving?”

Alex shook his head. “No. And, Guerin... I do have something tying me to Roswell.”

Michael swallowed thickly, then slid his hand up to where Alex’s was still toying with the pillowcase and covered it. It was the first time they’d touched in months, and it settled something in Michael’s soul. Instead of resting there, he trailed his hand along Alex’s arm, around the bend of his elbow and up across his bicep. 

“So maybe… once we get back…” His hand skimmed up the side of Alex’s neck and rested on his cheek, his fingertips just brushing the soft skin behind Alex’s ear. He felt breathless and so full of hope for the first time in such a long time. “We can…” 

“I’m just so tired of waiting,” Alex whispered, reaching up and tangling his fingers in Michael’s curls to pull him close. In spite of his hurried words, he paused when Michael could feel his breath on his lips, and for a few heartbeats they just looked at each other, like they had infinities of time. And when Michael pushed forward to finally press their lips together, he felt completely at peace. 

Micheal was right that he wouldn’t be sleeping that night. But in the end, he didn’t mind.

**Author's Note:**

> Want to hang out on Tumblr? I'm [unbreakablejemmasimmons](https://unbreakablejemmasimmons.tumblr.com/) over there!


End file.
